After Zhang Sutuo died in the Battle of Xingyang, after Li Mi's small force of "ambushing more than a thousand troops" rushed out, the powerful Zhang Sutuo's 20,000 elite soldiers unexpectedly had the phenomenon of "military defeat"? Zhang Sutuo was a famous fierce general of the Sui Dynasty, very sinister and cunning, and the peasant rebel army led by Wang Bo was suppressed by him. Zhang Sutuo was unable to reverse this situation until he was "killed in battle"?
The Sui Shu Zhang Sutuo Biography has a more detailed account of the situation after the ambush soldiers were killed. (Li) Mi and (Zhai) let the combined army encircle it, (Zhang) Sutuo collapsed and came out, left and right could not be exhausted, Sutuo Prancing Horse revived it, came and went, and all the people were defeated, but yang tian sighed: The army is defeated like this, how to see the son of heaven? He was killed in battle.
After Li Mi's ambush troops rushed out, he immediately broke the encirclement and rushed out like lightning in response to the encirclement of Li Mi and Zhai Rang, and prepared to reorganize the team to deal a fierce blow to the other side. But what was surprising was that the large troops did not rush out of the encirclement with him. He didn't have time to think much about it, and as soon as he lifted the reins, the Prancing Horse entered the enemy line again.
However, for him to come and go to rescue and summon his subordinates in spite of life and death, the formerly loyal subordinates were not only unusually indifferent at this time, but also took the opportunity to escape, and even the most trusted generals disappeared. Finally, I understood that the military's heart had gone, and there was no way to save such a situation. So he sighed and got off his horse and died.
It is not so much that Li Mi killed Zhang Sutuo, but rather that "Junxin" killed Zhang Sutuo. If it were not for the fact that the entire army had been scattered, and Zhang Sutuo could still integrate the soldiers and horses to fight again like Pei Changcai in the great battle, then the fiasco was likely to be Li Mi and Zhai Rang.
In fact, as early as two years earlier, in the tenth year of Daye (614 AD), when Zhang Sutuo led his army to attack Lu Mingyue at Xia Pi, hundreds of miles away from Qi County, there were signs of unintentional combat in Zhang Sutuo's army. When Zhang Sutuo asked his subordinates who would like to ambush and attack the other side's camp, there was an embarrassing scene of "everyone being right" - no one answered. In the end, it was Qin Shubao and Luo Shixin, the two most trusted generals, who came out, who barely completed the task.
In the twelfth year of Daye, especially after the Battle of Xingyang, the military's heart was even more unstable. The appearance of Li Mi's ambush troops did not pose much of a threat to this strong force, but it gave the soldiers who had no intention of fighting a "defeat of all" - that is, the opportunity and excuse for everyone to desert. It was precisely because Zhang Sutuo saw this clearly that he would sigh in despair and dismount and die.